A number of health experts and a congressman chatted with The Black Press last week to share their thoughts about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's health care platform and how it might impact Black America. Participants in the teleconference included Dr. Byllye Avery, a founder and president of the National Black Women's Health Imperative, Dr. Charles Franklin, a physician with extensive experience in communities of color, and U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.
 
All agreed that health care is an issue of critical importance in this fall's presidential race and that Sen. Barack Obama's plan appears to be best suited to meet the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who do not currently have health insurance.
 
"There are over seven million African Americans without health care - seven million," Dr. Byllye Avery, founder and president of the National Black Women's health Imperative, told The Black Press Thursday. "When we don't have access to health care, that means we routinely delay care. The lack of routine medical care in itself is a cause of serious ill health.
 
"This is our National Breast Cancer Month, and we note that one in eight women will suffer from breast cancer. Without health insurance, a lot of women won't get mammograms and a lot of men won't get exams for prostate cancer. It is very important that we are able to have routine medical care for prevention.
 
"When we fail to get health care, the breast cancer survival rate for African-American women is 77 percent, compared to 90 percent for white women. Most of the time we're diagnosed so much later and as a result care becomes more expensive."
 
Dr. Avery added that Black America's problems with heart disease, the leading killer of women, is associated with obesity and hypertension. "Forty percent of African Americans are hypertensive and 40 to 50 percent of us are obese," Dr. Avery. "That means we have high blood pressure, it's harder to treat us and it leads to heart disease. Without good medical care, you don't get prescription drugs and you have no way of keeping your disease in check."
 
Dr. Avery said that Blacks' health problems are further complicated by its struggles with incarceration, drug use and the HIV/AIDS virus, the leading cause of death among young Black women between the ages of 25 and 34. "Here, early detection and life-saving medication are really critical in prolonging life with HIV. This cannot happen without quality health care," she said Barack Obama's health care plan involves dramatically increasing the number of insured Americans by investing heavily in health insurance, an idea that is expected to cost taxpayers between $50 and $65 billion a year when it is fully implemented.
 
Sen. Obama breaks his health care reform plan down into three parts and contends that that it builds "upon the strengths of the U.S. health care system."
The three parts are:
 
1.    Quality, Affordable & Portable Health Coverage For All
 
2.  Modernizing The U.S. Health Care System To Lower
Costs & Improve Quality
 
3.    Promoting Prevention & Strengthening Public Health Obama claims that his health care reform plan will save the typical family up to $2,500 every year through:

* Health information technology investment aimed at reducing unnecessary spending that results from preventable errors and inefficient paper billing systems.

* Improving prevention and management of chronic conditions.

* Increasing insurance industry competition and reducing underwriting costs and profits in order to reduce insurance overhead.

* Providing reinsurance for catastrophic coverage, which will reduce insurance premiums.

* Making health insurance universal which will reduce spending on uncompensated care.
 
Dr. Charles Franklin, a noted family physician who specializes in internal medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland, described his more than three decades of work in the health profession as "being on the frontlines."
 
"One of the biggest barriers to us getting the type of care and being able to find a physician that understands us and speaks our language is lack of insurance," said Franklin, who estimates that his practice is 60 to 70 percent African-American and about 20 percent Hispanic. "About 20 percent of us don't have health insurance and it's even worse in the Hispanic community, about 30 percent. One of the best things about the Obama (health) plan is that everybody will be included.
 
"But there's even another more onerous problem: If you see somebody Black and over 40, they've probably affected in some way by at least one of the following -hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. We cannot have a plan that's going to have exclusions, where people cannot be treated for pre-existing conditions. Everybody walking has got a pre-existing condition unless they're very young. I can tell you from my experience that I see pre-diabetes, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension beginning in the 20s and early 30s.
 
"One of the critical points of Obama's plan is that it's going to eliminate excluding patients because of pre-exisiting conditions. ...I've seen (health care organizations) do some pretty mean-spirited things."
 
To illustrate his point, Dr. Franklin pointed to the case of a woman who was denied treatment for uterine cancer because a yeast infection she suffered with was categorized as a pre-existing condition. "That's like saying 'If you have a cold, we're not going to treat lung cancer,'" he said. "That's why we need to stop these games that the insurance companies are playing because they are really having an adverse effect on our people.
 
"Any plan like the John McCain plan that doesn't eliminate these pre-existing conditions, they could use that to eliminate most of the people who need insurance," Dr. Franklin added. "You can bet that if somebody doesn't have insurance, they're not getting health care. If they're not getting health care, they've got some conditions that have gone undertreated and need to be treated.
 
"I'm very excited about this Obama health care plan because I think that it's going to address all the needs that we have so that we can adequately provide health care for the African-American community."
 
"Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to provide just that: Health care to all African Americans,"U.S.  Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois, said.  "Under McCain's plan, health insurance benefits would be taxed for the first time in the history of the federal government even being involved in health care, resulting in about a $3.6 trillion tax on working families.
 
"McCain's health care plan would eliminate the payroll deduction on health benefits, which would have the effect of raising taxes on working families by about $3.6 trillion."
 
Jackson, who has served in Congress for 14 years and played a role in the establishment of the National Minority Health and Health Disparities Institute, said it's important that the federal government continue to support historically black colleges and universities in their efforts to encourage more Blacks to enter the medical field. "We know that African Americans and people of color, once they graduate from medical school, they're likely to work in and service their communities," Jackson told The Black Press. "The federal government has determined that it's a priority that we create more doctors in these particular communities.
 
"I'm confident that when one compares the Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin, that he or she would conclude that the Obama-Biden plan is going to reduce disparities in care for African Americans by tackling the root causes of health disparities by addressing differences in access to health coverage and promoting prevention and public health -both of which play a major role in addressing health disparities," he added. "They will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care by requiring hospitals and health plans to collect, analyze and report health care quality for disparity populations and hold those health care-providing facilities accountable for any differences that are found.
 
"Secondly, Barack wants to reduce costs for African Americans by offering federal insurance to employers to help ensure that unexpected of catastrophic illnesses do not make health insurance unaffordable or out of reach for businesses and their employees. He also wants to ensure that patients receive and providers deliver the best possible health care."
 
"Our health is the most important thing that we have," Dr. Avery said, "and our health really is at stake in this election. I say, 'Vote for your health.'"?